How to avoid creative burn out

I’m a business owner and a very happy one at that.

I love photographing people and I adore my clients.

And yes, there’s also a ‘but’ coming…

It’s easy to get burned out in this line of work.

As much as I love doing headshots, boudoir, glamour, and family portrait sessions with all my heart, and as incredibly AWESOME as my beautiful clients are, photographing people is also a physically taxing endeavor. More often than not, it’s also an emotional experience for both my clients and me. I’ve had clients open up about hurtful things that were said to them about their looks when they were children. I’ve had clients who feel like they should hide parts of their body that their parents told them were not perfect but trust me enough to allow these parts of their body to be seen. And when they see their finished printed portraits and start to tear up and tell me they didn’t know they could look this beautiful, I feel it in my heart.

I love this work so much, but it does require all of me. And I haven’t even touched on the level of effort involved in running a business. The daily phone calls, emails, marketing, and accounting that’s required is a lot as well. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Being a business owner has been, and continues to be, a blessing in my life. But burnout can happen.

So what can we do to avoid it? In my opinion, one of the best things we can do is to take a little time for a creative project. And when I say a creative project I don’t mean an endeavor that has any particular goal in mind. I mean a project that nurtures your heart and soul. That’s enough. We’re worth doing that for ourselves and in my opinion taking time for a personal project, as a creative, is a form of self-care.

So this last Sunday when I woke up I decided that I wanted to photograph something I had never photographed before…flowers. This might seem like a very small thing to someone who doesn’t know me, but this desire was wholly new for me. I’ve said many times in the past that the only thing I’m interested in photographing is people, which is largely true. For me, taking portraits of people is where the magic of photography lies. There’s nothing more exhilarating than the moment a person starts to relax and trust me, letting their guard down, allowing me in and letting me capture their soul with my camera. I’ve been in love with that process from day one and I believe I always will be.

This is why in the past I’ve always overlooked genres of photography that don’t involve people. But on Sunday morning for the first time I just wanted to photograph flowers. So I grabbed a couple of fabric flowers that I use during client sessions and started clicking away with my camera. I’ve never taken photographs like this in my life- I honestly don’t know where they came from within me but I already feel like I’ve been creatively ‘reset’ since taking them.

Are you feeling depleted or burnt out or even just less-than-creative at the moment? Consider taking on a personal project just for you and see what happens…